Written by: Elana K. Arnold

Illustrated by: Elizabet Vukovic

For ages: 4 years and up

Language: English

Topics Covered: Family, Social-Emotional Learning, Grief, Loss of Pet, Cochlear Implant Visibility, Home Birth, Childbirth, Love. 

Summary: 

Wow. Wow wow wow.  This book is absolutely breathtaking and caught me by surprise upon reading.  I was looking forward to reading this book, since author Elana K. Arnold wrote another one of our favorites (What Riley Wore) and this newest story did not disappoint.

Let’s begin this praise-a-thon with the diversity of the characters and dreamy illustrations.  The story centers around two families, one headed up by an interracial lesbian couple and the other by a POC couple, one of which has a cochlear implant.  Both doctors are of color; each family is changing on this ordinary day-one is losing a member and one is gaining a member.  This book celebrates how the extraordinary and ordinary blend together, different families experience joy and loss simultaneously and cope with big changes and emotions.  Moments the radically shift some lives don’t impact others, as shown by a neighbor mundanely watering flowers, unaware of the goings on inside neighboring houses.

Something that also makes this book special is that a home birth is featured, I honestly cannot think of another book that has one.  Also, I don’t think this is giving too much away, given the gorgeous cover art! Anyway, all around this book outshines a lot of others that dance around delicate and emotional topics.  An Ordinary Day is a beautiful tribute to family and the moments in life that make it special.

This book was sent to us by our friends at Simon & Schuster, but all opinions are our own!  This book is out on March 10th.

About the Author & the Illustrator:

ELANA K. ARNOLD is the author of critically acclaimed and award-winning young adult novels and children’s books, including the Printz Honor winner Damsel, the National Book Award finalist What Girls Are Made Of, and Global Read Aloud selection A Boy Called Bat and its sequels. Several of her books are Junior Library Guild selections and have appeared on many best book lists, including the Amelia Bloomer Project, a catalog of feminist titles for young readers. Elana teaches in Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program and lives in Southern California with her family and menagerie of pets. 

Elizabet Vukovic is an illustrator from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and she graduated from the Academy of Art University, in San Francisco, California.

Her main interest is children’s book illustration but she also experiments in other directions of art as well (character design, concept art, fashion illustration and decorative art).